As pressure ramps up over the rejection of Qatar’s bid to add more international flights into Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, Malinauskas said there was no restriction on the volume of international flights it could fly into Adelaide.

“Qatar can fly in and out of Adelaide on a very frequent basis indeed, and there’s more capacity for them to add more flights to the Adelaide market should they so choose,” the Premier said on Wednesday.

“That’s a good thing.”

Qatar Airways currently runs two daily international services to and from Adelaide: a direct Adelaide to Doha route and another via Melbourne.

Malinauskas said the Qatari-government-owned airline was a “valued partner”, highlighting its role in providing repatriation flights for South Australians stranded overseas during the pandemic.

“Qatar was pretty much the only airline that committed to regular servicing of Adelaide for both passengers and freight throughout COVID, and they deserve our praise for that,” he said.

“I’ve expressed this to Qatar personally. We are very grateful for the support that Qatar has shown the South Australian people particularly throughout COVID… let alone what they do for us in terms of accessibility to international markets for inbound tourists.

“So we see Qatar as a valued partner and that’s a relationship we want to maintain here in South Australia.”

Passengers arriving at Adelaide Airport from a repatriation flight in 2021. Photo: Roy Vandervegt/AAP

Federal Transport Minister Catherine King has faced intense questioning over why, amid high international airfares, she rejected a bid from Qatar Airways to add 21 flights per week to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane on top of the 28 weekly services it already offers to those airports.

The Opposition, which this week initiated a Senate inquiry into the decision, has accused the government running a “protection racket” for Qantas.

But the government has so far resisted calls to reverse its decision. Today, King said invasive body searches of a group of Australian women at Doha Airport three years ago provided the “context” for the rejection

However, she also said there was no “one factor” that swayed her decision “one way or the other”.

“In making this decision, I did have a national interest, not commercial interests at play when I was making that decision,” she said.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek today said there was nothing stopping Qatar running more flights to smaller Australian airports, including Adelaide.

“I think… Catherine King has been very clear: if Qatar Airways wants to run more flights in and out of Australia, it can do that. It can run in and out of Adelaide, Canberra, the Gold Coast, Cairns,” she said.

Adelaide Airport management has been trying to lure international airlines back to South Australia after COVID-era restrictions on travel were lifted.

Aside from Qatar, the airlines that currently run international flights out of Adelaide are Singapore Airlines (Adelaide-Singapore), Air New Zealand (Adelaide-Auckland), Malaysia Airlines and Batik Air (both Adelaide-Kuala Lumpar), and Fiji Airways (Adelaide-Nadi).

But the airport is still yet to lure back direct flights from China Southern Airlines and Cathay Pacific, which flew to Adelaide from Guangzhou and Hong Kong respectively

“We have to get our customers back,” Adelaide Airport CEO Brenton Cox told the parliamentary inquiry into the South Australian university merger last month.

“In a really narrow-minded sense, the China market hasn’t come back and we really want China Southern to come back, we want Cathay to come back.”

Cox, who expressed his support for the merger of the University of Adelaide and UniSA, citing its capacity to attract more international students, later added: “Airlines will fly only if they can make money.

“It’s globally competitive, so you need to be able to prove the volume for them to be prepared to fly,” he said.

“Turning on those market dynamics is really the biggest thing that we can do to reach our potential.”

Qantas has also not offered a direct international flight out of Adelaide since it axed its Adelaide-Singapore route in 2013.

Malinauskas said the state government would ask new Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson, who replaced embattled former CEO Alan Joyce on Wednesday, to reinstate the route.

“We will see the new leadership at Qantas as an opportunity to reengage at the highest levels on the possibility of having international flights in and out of Adelaide,” he said, highlighting the decade-long absence of Qantas’ Adelaide-Singapore Qantas route.

“We would like that (route) to be reinstated. I made those representations to Mr Joyce in the past, and I’ll certainly be taking them up with Ms Hudson.

“We hope we’ll get a good hearing in that regard.”

-With AAP